Press Release Archive

Blackboard Announces Greenhouse Award(TM) Winners

WASHINGTON, DC, Mar 14, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX News Network) -- Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB) announced today the winners of its
annual Greenhouse awards recognizing academic institutions for
exemplary use of Blackboard(R) technology solutions to foster
educational innovations. The Greenhouse awards feature three
categories including Exemplary Course, Exemplary Campus Services and
Communities of Practice. Entries were judged by a panel comprised of
leading faculty and administrators involved in the use of technology
to enhance education, including last year's Greenhouse Award winners
as well as Blackboard managers. Eight winners spanning all the
categories will receive a portion of $50,000 in funding aimed at
developing and sharing best practices related to the use of
Blackboard solutions for enhancing education.

Following are the winners of this year's Greenhouse Awards, with an
overview of each of their winning entries. The complete entries can
be accessed, free of charge at Blackboard's Connections site at
http://connections.blackboard.com. Visitors simply need to click on
the greenhouse tab on the site.

GREENHOUSE COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AWARD

Seton Hall University: for use of the Blackboard Content System to
develop and implement the Standards Portfolio, enabling members of the
Seton Hall community to create and access assessment materials and
e-Portfolios.

The Amarillo Independent School District: for use of the Blackboard
Content System to create a high-quality, testable curriculum aligned
to standards using a living document format. The living document
format enables teachers to provide continuous input and best
practices which can be shared across the district.

GREENHOUSE EXEMPLARY COURSE AWARD

Exemplary Non-Course

Wichita Public Schools: for STEPs (Standards for Teachers through
Educational Projects), a professional development program to help
K-12 teachers learn new technology skills, create project-based
lessons, and meet the International Society for Technology in
Education's (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)
for Teachers.

Exemplary Online Course

William Rainey Harper College: for E-Commerce Development, a course
which introduces foundation concepts in E-Commerce and provides
students practice as they create their own e-commerce stores.

Exemplary Blended Course

University of North Florida: for Community Nursing Service-Learning
Homebase, a community-based service learning curriculum which
integrates all of the universities pre-licensure upper division
nursing students into one of six non-term service-learning "courses"
called home bases with a complementary Blackboard(R) site. The home
bases contain multiple partnerships around a geographic or program
area.

Exemplary K-12 Course

Fayetteville-Manlius High School: for their Earth Science course
which provides 9th grade students 24/7 access to classroom resources
such as PowerPoint lecture notes, handouts, movies, graphing
calculator tools, Podcasts, Internet links, and various reference
materials, through the Blackboard Learning System(TM).

GREENHOUSE EXEMPLARY CAMPUS SERVICES

West Texas A&M University: for use of the Blackboard Commerce
Suite(TM) to save 7,000 human hours by switching from emergency book
loan checks to placing the money on the student's ID Card. The campus
is recognized for its comprehensive off-campus merchant program
featuring 46 area merchants at which students spent more than
$350,000 on everything from prescriptions and groceries to auto
repair.

University of Pittsburgh: for use of the Blackboard Commerce Suite to
create and maintain multiple advanced data integration points across
campus with their Blackboard Transaction System, Residential
Management System, Persona offline door access, Security and Student
Information Systems. The campus also recently replaced a majority of
legacy, non-IP hardware with new TCP/IP native hardware: vending,
laundry, copy and additional network registers for use all over
campus and at the convocation center.

"It's simply amazing to see the breadth and depth of the winning
entries for the Greenhouse Awards -- in only the second year of the
award's existence," said Michael Chasen, president and CEO of
Blackboard. "We continue to be impressed by the kinds of innovations
we see clients creating and implementing with our technology. It's
very exciting to be part of this process, and we look forward to
continued sharing and collaboration of best practices around this
contest and on the Blackboard Connections site."

About Blackboard

Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB) is a leading provider of enterprise
software applications and related services to the education industry.
Founded in 1997, Blackboard enables educational innovations
everywhere by connecting people and technology. With two product
suites, the Blackboard Academic Suite (TM) and the Blackboard
Commerce Suite (TM), Blackboard is used by millions of people at
academic institutions around the globe, including colleges,
universities, K-12 schools and other education providers, as well as
textbook publishers and student-focused merchants that serve
education providers and their students. Blackboard is headquartered
in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe and Asia.

Blackboard

Educate. Innovate. Everywhere.

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans
and prospects for Blackboard and other statements containing the words
"believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and similar
expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning
of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual
results may differ materially from those indicated by such
forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors,
including the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section of our
Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 15, 2006 with the SEC.
In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press
release represent the Company's views as of March 14, 2006. The
Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will
cause the Company's views to change. However, while the Company may
elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the
future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.
These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as
representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to March
14, 2006.